


From hell

by themerrymutants



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Abuse, Blind Character, Eye Trauma, Gen, Human Experimentation, Major Original Character(s), Physical Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-28 20:17:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3868381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themerrymutants/pseuds/themerrymutants
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik the clone finally works up the courage to speak up about his childhood to Magnus the "original" Erik Lehnsherr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From hell

"I want to tell you about the project," Erik blurted. Not quite what he'd wanted to say but it'd work.

"Alright," Magnus replied.

Erik sighed in relief at his response. He’d been worried that Magnus would refuse, or worse, change the subject entirely. He could understand why he would. After all who wanted to be reminded of the hell they’d gone through? Normally their conversations, at least on his part, were easy. Despite Magnus’ clear disdain for him he had been comfortable. But with a conversation like this he could barely find the words to even begin.

“I suppose I should start from the beginning,” he said taking a deep breath. “I was born in 1946, the first of what would be 20 clones and the only one to make it past the age of 9. I spent most of my early years, that I can remember anyway, in a cage staying as quiet as possible to avoid being singled out for testing. It never worked. They constantly tried to find ways to make us age faster and once we were adults age switch it back off so we could age slowly like the enigmas.

By my 5th year they finally figured out how to make us age more quickly: however it worked far too well. It killed at least three FAs before they discontinued their efforts. They then tried to make a way to have our powers kick in early allowing us to go into the field when we were still cute an innocent enough to dispel almost anyone’s suspicions. Given that I was to be their obedient copy of you I didn’t escape that particular experiment. All it managed to do was delay when my powers would emerge, by only a year, and weaken them.

While all of this was going on I knew that something was missing. I wanted love which, while able to display it, was something which I had no word for or real concept of. I tried to make Her happy, another word which I wouldn’t learn until much later, in the vain hope she’d fulfill this need. I should have known better than to seek love from someone who couldn’t feel. 

Day in day out the routine was the same: wake up, huddle in the back of my cage hoping the scientists forgot I existed in the first place, get dragged out anyway, testing, training, more testing, punishments as needed, get tossed back in my cage again and try my best to ignore the soft crying, the sounds of those who were in their death throws, rinse, and repeat. 

At the age of 7 (when even the most hardy of us started dying because of various complications) they started monitoring me even more closely than before worried that the only bit of your DNA they had would be wasted. That was when the training let up and the testing became more intensive. If they could find an excuse for it they tested it. By the time I turned 9 I was the only one left. It was then that the situation reversed: the training increased and the testing, blessedly, decreased. They waited year after year for me to finally show my mutation. To show some dramatic control over one of their machines killing one of their more annoying interns I’m convinced that was the case: the poor woman was there in every situation where they tried to force it to emerge, but it never happened.

I turned 13 and they became nervous. To their knowledge you’d shown your powers far earlier. So, again in a last ditch effort to salvage the epic failure I was, they decided to experiment. They’d recently gained a few samples of various ocular mutations: concussive blasts, some various others, and a pair of eyes that apparently had superhuman sight including sight across the spectrum, night vision, and the supposed ability to see up to a mile. I was tranquilized, strapped down, and knocked out. According to the memories Enigma managed to grab later, and my files the idiot they got to do the surgery had lied about how steady his hands were. In the attempt to remove my eyes he practically butchered the surface of them and the skin around it.”

To emphasize his point Erik removed his sunglasses and looked up. The skin surrounding the eye itself was practically covered in small white scars and the eyes themselves were a pale greenish grey. He’d assumed Magnus had already seen them but knowing the story behind the injury likely put them into a new light. After a moment or two he put the sunglasses back on before resuming.

"For whatever reason they didn’t bother to just take out my damaged eyes and replace them with the new ones, maybe they took to long to actually get around to using said eyes and realized they weren’t good anymore. In the end I was permanently blinded. The pain was….excruciating and enough to, finally, cause my x-gene to activate. It still wasn’t the impressive show they wanted. In fact I was probably the only one who noticed. Despite my eyes being completely covered and, as mentioned before, useless I could ‘see’. God bless the person who convinced her to only use a reasonable amount of metal when building the facility in the first place. Later she’d build rooms to overload me and not to long after: voids. Sidetracked, sorry. Some how our ferrokinesis managed to develop just a bit further to allow me to ‘see’ in bright light, part of the reason why overloads are so unpleasant, the metals in my surroundings. At least that’s what Hank says. The rest of us believe it’s one of those situationally induced mutations which we’ve dubbed ‘magnetic sonar’ because there’s really no proper way to describe it but that comes close. What you sense I see. Pity it’s so easy to fool it could be so much less of a pain.

Due to being blinded I was officially marked as Failed Attempt-1 and shipped off to the enigma’s cell block. They were likely going to use me as a scare tactic to remind them that Nyx owned every last bit of their lives. I probably would have died if [Enigma](http://themerrymutants.tumblr.com/post/92272368218/enigma-bio) hadn’t spoken up for me. Nyx agreed to let me live with the condition that any mistake I made would be on her head. To this day I can’t even  _begin_  to imagine what Nyx did to her because of me.

With the confirmation that I was now a full fledged weapon I had my first termination unit and tracking chip installed. Like the others I had my ‘birth’ date carved into my neck.”

He turned showing Magnus the raised scar which, once one got past how painful that had to have been, read 04/03/1959. Another, far more crude, scar ran through the center of the date. He turned back around again giving the other a soft smile.

"She started my brain washing routine after that however it just didn’t work on me. Try as She might She couldn’t quite wash me properly. My conditioning was very, well conditional, with it only kicking in only under extreme circumstances. However she _was_ able to convince me to not question. She quickly figured out my sight’s weaknesses and exploited them. If I so much as twitched without her explicit command I was put into an overload and from there a void. I can still remember my time there. The feeling of being nowhere, and the eventual sensation of falling. It was the most terrifying part of the project for me. Including all the other punishments, illusions, and the death. So much death.

 Not too long after Nyx finally settled on what she could get out of me I was sent on my first solo mission. I honestly can’t remember the details other than I was in France, alone, and was utterly terrified that the unit would be activated and I’d get killed. What I do remember best is being huddled in an alley because I had nowhere else to stay.

 A woman, Josephine as I found out later, happened to be passing by and noticed me. Instead of running from me like pretty much anyone else who was sane, she asked for my name, where I lived, if I lived anywhere. She was the first, of a small handful of people, to actually care. At the time however I didn’t know that not all interaction brought pain. She kneeled down placing her jacket on my shoulders, I didn’t mean to kill her, I was just so  _scared_. I lashed out with my powers picking her up by her necklace forcibly tossing her several feet away. I remained huddled like that for several minutes before I noticed that her circulatory system wasn’t pulsing like it should have been. When I investigated I realized she was dead. She just wanted to help me and I killed her. I managed to create a strong enough field to take her somewhere she’d be found. She didn’t deserve to have me bury her there. She had someone who cared about her and I didn’t want them to perpetually wonder where she’d gone and why she’d left. The only thing I took was her necklace. I didn’t deserve the jacket she had tried to give me. Once I’d done what I could to position her properly I ran. She’s the reason I refused to kill. When I die and have to answer for all the blood I’m drowning in I want to at least be able to give her  _something_  to show her that her death wasn’t entirely pointless. That I did something to try and make up for it. She was only 22.”

He wiped his eyes giving Magnus an apologetic smile. Josephine’s murder was what cemented his being a monster in his mind and he still had nightmares where she came back to torment him about it. He never argued with her or tried to defend himself, he deserved what she gave him and he knew it.

“N-nyx was thrilled at how strong I was but absolutely hated my refusal to kill. She took it out on Enigma, the team, and I; every time I was supposed to kill someone and they did it for me. Danielle, Frankie, Sarah, Enigma, and I we were the ones that were not only still alive but we were good at what we did. I was put in the auctions with the others. God I hated those auctions. Reduced to a slab of meat to be scrutinized by anyone interested. Most of the time we were stripped down first to show our physique. Nyx, of course, disguised the worst of our scars so we’d sell better. Though we were more on loan to the people rather than being their property. Our services were bought we were shipped out, with the promise of hell upon return should we fail, and remained there until our mission was complete. If our handler wasn’t satisfied we were shipped back, they were given a refund, and we were beaten within an inch of our lives. It was almost terrifying how cold we could become, and truly terrifying to see myself becoming almost as cruel as Nyx was. Many deserved to die but we aren’t supposed to be the judges. Hopefully they got theirs for their crimes.

The worst were the innocents. They’d seen something they shouldn’t have and the criminal in question would want us to find and kill them. We just couldn’t though. So we convinced our handler that we’d done it only to find out later that Enigma hadn’t done the psychic suggestion right and they died anyway. And died a lot worse.

In 1962 we were finally freed by SHIELD. No more experiments, no more testing, no more voids, no more torture. We were free. Well everyone but Danielle was free. By then there was just the five of us. There were 57 of us in all. 20 clones and 37, successful, enigmas and God only knows how many mutants.

I don’t know what happened to those there as breeders or for genetic material. I hope they survived. That they’ve forgotten as much of hell as they could and just tried to focus on what little good happened, and got to live good lives like they should have in the first place.

I can’t forget though. Every night I can still hear my fellow clones muttering to whomever was listening to just let them go anywhere else, the screams of pain from the enigmas, their prayers, the smell of bleach, every last Goddamn thing. None of us can escape it. The team has a hive mind, when we’re within range of each other we see everything. Our nightmares, our pain, and occasionally it helps. However there are days when I realize just how easy it would be to swipe one of Enigma’s guns and pull the trigger but don’t, and then there’s the days where I have to force myself not to do it.

It’s a pity that I never hear Magda’s voice at night, and dream of how she took me in despite how much my mere presence hurt, how hard she worked to remind me that I wasn’t just your cheap copy. She was the second person outside of my team to show me genuine love and to this day I still can’t figure out why, but I’m glad she did. She’s the biggest reason, post-project, I’m still alive and the reason for what little self-esteem I’ve managed to scrounge up. She let me stay there until Enigma came for me in 1986. I’ve been teaching at the school ever since.”

He’d only meant to tell him about the project. The rest had just spilled out. It felt good though to tell someone outside of the team about this.


End file.
